BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Saturday, December 28, 2019


My Letter in New York Times Book Review; Seven clues protagonist of one of their 10 Best Books of 2019 has unacknowledged multiple personality

To the Editor:

When you named Ben Lerner’s “The Topeka School” one of the 10 Best Books of 2019 (Dec. 15), one good thing about the novel was not mentioned: its alarmed consideration of fast-talking, confusing, data-filled techniques like “the spread.” The implication is that many people, including writers, have fallen into the trap of using this style, and that they need to learn “how to speak again.”

Kenneth A. Nakdimen
New York
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/27/books/review/letters-to-the-editor.html

I had read and discussed two of Ben Lerner’s books for this blog: his nonfiction, “The Hatred of Poetry,” and his novel, “The Topeka School.”

My posts on “The Topeka School” cite at least seven clues that the protagonist has unacknowledged multiple personality:

1. “multiple tracks in his mind”
2.  his mind has “parts”
3.  he feels like a “flickering presence, rapidly changing ages”
4.  his episode of dissociation of identity as a child
5.  anonymous voice in italics: his agitated alternate personality
6.  protagonist feels that “a speech was delivering him”
7. “…his tongue feels like it belongs to someone else…”

Search “Ben Lerner” to read those posts. Search “unacknowledged multiple personality” for prior discussions regarding other writers.

Comment
Editors of The New York Times Book Review are in a difficult position. If their reviews were to mention unacknowledged multiple personality, readers might be fascinated, but authors and publishers might be frightened away.
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